Wendy sat by the fountain in the town square, watching water spill over the edge like time she couldn't quite catch.
She held a stack of handwritten pages—William's, unmistakably. She'd found them tucked into the poetry book he'd "accidentally" left behind. No name. No title. Just raw words.
"I wanted to be the silence between your sentences.
But I was too loud to love quietly."
She hadn't meant to read them all.
Footsteps approached. William sat beside her without asking.
"I wasn't snooping," she said, still staring at the water.
"I know," he said gently. "If you had been, you'd have found the one I didn't write."
She looked at him then. Really looked.
"You're afraid," she said.
He nodded. "Terrified."
"Of what?"
He hesitated. "Of you seeing me… and staying."
Wendy swallowed, fingers tightening on the pages.
"I don't stay," she whispered.
"Maybe that's why I wrote you into the parts I thought you'd never read."
A quiet, fragile moment passed between them, full of things almost said.
And for once, neither tried to fill the silence.